Most people are optimists, although they may claim they are not. People who call themselves realists are often the biggest optimists of all.

Resistance to change is proportional to how much the future might be altered by any given act.

They walked through the rainy dark like gaunt ghosts, and Garraty didn't like to look at them. They were the walking dead.

A writer's notebook is the best way in the world to immortalize bad ideas. My idea about a good idea is one that sticks around and sticks around and sticks around.

Pray for rain all you like, but dig a well as you do it.

Dead fields under a November sky, scattered rose petals brown and turning up at the edges, empty pools scummed with algae, rot, decomposition, dust.

She felt like someone who drowns remembering what it was like to still be on the boat, so calm and at ease, so carelessly safe